


knock me off my feet

by inkin_brushes



Series: girls!AU (EXO) [6]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, bowling, date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-15 22:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10558618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkin_brushes/pseuds/inkin_brushes
Summary: When Kris suggested that they go bowling, Baekhyun had, at first, thought he was joking.





	

Baekhyun shuffled her feet, scuffing her shoes lightly on the ground, as she adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder nervously. The bowling alley that she’d arranged to meet Kris in front of for their latest date wasn’t in the greatest of neighbourhoods, and although she stood as close to the door to the alley as she could, so that she could escape in a moment, there was still a small amount of fear curling its way through her body, as every passing moment meant that Kris was more late than before. 

She’d sent her parents away with protestations that she could wait by herself for the five minutes that it would take Kris to arrive. Although Kris had, by this point, at least met her parents, she didn’t want the awkwardness of another meeting marring this date. She regretted that a little now, as she waited by herself, fifteen minutes later. She wasn’t quite as bad about this stuff as Kyungsoo but the area was bad enough that even the man shuffling across the parking lot to his car had her clutching her purse closer, heart hammering in her throat. Right then she’d take a few moments of awkward boyfriend and parent interaction over this. 

She’d never been stood up by Kris before, and calling her parents to come collect her would just result in a long night of them fussing over her and trying to restrict how much she could see Kris even further. She doubted he would pull a no-show on purpose, especially not after the past month. Things had been going — great was the only word she could think of to describe it. It had been going _smoothly_ , things progressing so nicely that Chanyeol had teased her on more than one occasion of being the next Junmyeon. Baekhyun had retorted that she’d rather be like Junmyeon in this case than like Kyungsoo, who was still clashing regularly with Jongin, unable to put aside her own conflicting feelings even as they somehow stumbled into regular dating, or like Chanyeol, who was putting up a rather complicated dance of not seeming interested in Lu Han even while the two of them fell into bed with each other on an alarmingly regular basis. Besides, Baekhyun wasn’t quite the same as Junmyeon, and so there was a satisfyingly larger amount of kissing in her relationship, and a lot less joint study sessions. 

The bowling date had, however, been inspired purely by Kyungsoo. Baekhyun had listened to her story about her bowling date with Jongin with something like amused incredulity. Bowling was lame, everyone knew that, even in their school; none of them had been since middle school, and it had been edging into embarrassing even then. Chanyeol had laughed herself silly until Kyungsoo shoved her off the couch and sat firmly on her stomach, pinching her, protesting that it had been _fun_.

Kris had apparently thought it did, in fact, sound fun, because he’d suggested that they do the same thing not long after. Baekhyun had, at first, thought he was joking. He’d never given off any sort of indication that he was into something like this, and their dates which hadn’t involved hanging out with the others had merely been to see movies or to get ice cream. _Bowling_ , she felt, was rather on the same lines as going to the zoo together. There could be no escape from the sheer cliche of the whole thing. 

But Kris had suggested it, and he had been serious about it, and since she didn’t have any objections beyond those which would potentially offend him, she’d agreed. And now she stood, _twenty_ minutes after she’d first arrived, waiting for him to come to the date that she still thought was kind of silly. 

She sighed and fished her phone out of her purse, checking for any messages from him. There was nothing but a message from Chanyeol letting her know that she’d been to her house and taken the copy of _The Scarlet Letter_ that Baekhyun had promised to let her borrow for class. Baekhyun frowned and fired off a response telling Chanyeol to _not break into people’s houses while no one is around, damn it_.

 _Do your parents know you use such ugly language_ , was Chanyeol’s rapid reply, and Baekhyun looked up from that to find Kris’s car pulling into the parking lot. 

Baekhyun let out a long breath of relief, shoulders slumping. She was glad that he hadn’t, after all, stood her up, because she had no idea how she was supposed to deal with that. She knew that all the people around her would have had differing advice to give but she knew that really, she would have ended up sweeping it under the carpet if he’d asked her to, and she wasn’t sure that would have been the best thing to do in the end.

He parked as close to the door as he could, an indication that he’d noticed her waiting there for him, and was out of the car so fast she wondered if he’d even cut the engine before he had opened the door. He took a moment to lock the doors and then _almost_ , but not quite, jogged towards her. He was wearing his usual dark jeans, paired this time with a t-shirt with a strange geometric design on it in shades of blue and dark purple. He had a leather jacket over the top, and sneakers on his feet, presumably for ease when it came to getting the bowling shoes on and off. Piercings in his ears glinted in the sunlight as he came closer. 

She saw his eyes look her over quickly, and resisted the urge to shuffle or squirm. Sometimes it amused her, sometimes embarrassed her, how different their styles were. She was dressed in a pretty floral skirt, with a white blouse, her grey peacoat open over it. Even with her heeled ankle boots, she still only barely came up to his chest, and he had to duck quite a bit to kiss her cheek lightly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice ringing with sincerity. “My mom wanted my help with something really last minute and then I hit every single damn red light on my way here.” 

She shook her head to let him know it was okay. And it was. She could already feel all her budding anger fading away in the face of his genuine apology. There was a hitch in his brow which let her know that he was still worried. “Is your mom okay?” she asked softly, and the hitch disappeared as he snorted.

“Yeah. She wanted some help with some _shelves_.” He shrugged, as if to portray how silly he considered the request to be. “Like, I’m happy to help her with anything, you know? But it could have waited until tonight.”

“Maybe she just didn’t want you to come see me,” Baekhyun said, her lips twitching.

“Nah, she loves you. Keeps nattering on about how lucky I am to find such a _nice_ girl.” He looked at her then with one of his intense looks, the ones which made her feel like there was someone trailing a series of feathers down her back, sending a shiver down her spine, her knees taking on a rather unsettling liquid feeling. Luckily, he seemed to take the shiver as a sign that she was cold, and snapped his eyes from hers as he ushered her into the bowling alley. 

It was a lot warmer in there, and filled with the noise of balls hitting pins, announcements, and pings and beeps from the section to their right which held an arcade filled with younger teenagers. She found, as the warmth turned her cheeks and nose red, that she had been a lot colder waiting outside than she’d thought she was. She could see Kris giving her quick, darting glances, as if he wanted to say something, and by the time they approached the front desk, he was rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, and managed to clear his throat to speak to her before she interrupted by talking to the person behind the desk. 

“Hi, two people,” she said brightly, and as the guy turned to mess around with the computer to his side, Baekhyun turned back to Kris, fixing him with a small frown, and motioned for him to lower his head so that she could whisper into his ear. He bowed his head obediently and she pressed her lips to his cheek. “Stop being so weird,” she murmured, “I don’t mind that you were late.”

He shook his head, though there was a faint pinkness across his cheeks which made her smile to see. He’d been so stoic the first time they’d met, and again during most of their first date, that she’d been concerned that he would be so unemotional that she wouldn’t have been able to cope. She was coming to see that it was a certain shyness and a certain _silliness_ that held him back right away. 

“That’s not it,” he murmured. “Although I am sorry, for that. I just — I was thinking that my mom is right. I am lucky. To have you, I mean.” He was avoiding her eyes by the end, staring resolutely at the guy serving them, who came back over with their aisle number and to take their shoe size, and so prevented Baekhyun from saying anything in response to Kris. She was glad for it. She didn’t know what she could have said, and she was fairly certain that her blazing face was answer enough.

By the time they’d switched their shoes over, bought sodas from the fast food stand at the back of the alley, found their lane and entered their names, the awkwardness had mostly passed, although Baekhyun’s face still felt hot when she pressed the back of her hand to it when Kris’s back was turned. _Get a grip_ , she told herself sternly. _What he said wasn’t even that bad really_.

“I’m first,” Kris said, already walking forward to pick up a ball. She had a moment of wondering whether his fingers would even fit inside the ball, and covered her laugh against her palms. He didn’t look back at her. He still didn’t seem like he could quite meet her eyes and she felt a brief amount of amused triumph at that. That triumph turned into full delight as he threw two gutterballs in a row, and turned back to her with consternation on his face.

“You aren’t very good at this, are you?” she asked, grinning at him as she got to her feet. He just shrugged, a small smile tugging at his lips, the kind of smile he would never let actually be a smile. She made her way up to the front, taking her time to pick up a ball that was weighted just enough that it didn’t feel like it was going to take her arm off if she swung it back. She was aware of Kris’s gaze against her back, distracting enough that she threw a gutterball of her own. 

She flounced back to the balls and picked another one while she waited for the pins to be reset, ignoring his soft chuckles. This time the ball rolled down the lane fairly straight, listing to the left just enough that Baekhyun became concerned that it was going to be another failure before it hit anything, like the previous one. Luckily it stayed straight enough and righted itself towards the end and took out just over half of the pins. 

“Yes!” she squealed, jumping into the air, her excitement too much to contain for a second before the embarrassment swept it all away when she saw people staring at her. She was still smiling, however, when she turned around and flashed a playful peace sign in Kris’s direction.

He’d been grinning when she turned, but at that he schooled his features back into a very serious frown which just made her smile harder. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

She waved her hand at the screen. “One of us actually has points,” she said. She sat down next to him, arms folded across her chest, and he leaned forward for a moment like he was going to kiss her, but then he stood instead, stretching his arms above his head. 

“Mmm,” he mumbled, heading for the lane. This time when he chose, he picked a ball that was heavy enough that Baekhyun wouldn’t have been able to shift it at all. She watched with somewhat shameful interest as the muscles in his arms shifted and flexed as he lifted it and carried it to the lane. He took one deep breath, face setting into an expression that she would have associated with him taking a game changing shot in basketball — his eyebrows were drawn, mouth in a firm line of concentration, and it made her wonder what his face would look like during a basketball game.

He pulled his arm back, swung it forward and released the ball. It shot straight down the lane and knocked down every single pin on its journey. Baekhyun blinked.

When Kris turned back around he had a very solemn expression on his face, and it clicked in her mind immediately before he could say anything. “You’re really good at bowling!” she shouted, pointing her finger in his direction accusingly. 

His lips twitched. He sat back down and took a sip of his Coke before he answered, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m okay.”

“That,” she protested, motioning at the score screen, where the strike celebration was just fading to reveal her now decidedly mediocre score, “is much better than okay.”

He shrugged again. “Zitao and I used to come here a lot when we were in middle school. We would play a couple of games and spend the rest of our money in the arcade. It’s been a while though.”

“But what about the gutterballs?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest, giving him an unimpressed look.

He smirked. “I wanted to see how good you were before I committed.”

She whacked him on the arm and jumped to her feet, stomping away to take her shot, the sound of his laughter following her and making her smile despite herself. 

By the last round, she was losing so spectacularly that she’d ceased pouting about it and was instead taking great pride in it. Every gutterball brought another cheer from her and another widening smile from him, his eyes soft enough when he looked at her that she was trying to avoid looking back at him. He, of course, finished well over one hundred, while she barely broke sixty. 

“You’re lucky I’m not mad,” Baekhyun told him, chasing the ice in her drink with her straw as he finished off the last piece of the pizza they’d bought midway through the game. “You brought me here with the prime objective of embarrassing me.”

“No,” he corrected. “I wanted to impress you.”

She squinted at him. “Impress me with your _bowling skills_?” she asked flatly.

He shrugged. “I guess so.”

“If you wanted to truly impress me, you should invite me to see one of your basketball games.”

He was silent for a couple of seconds, chewing thoughtfully before he swallowed and said, “I should, shouldn’t I.”

She didn’t say anything more for a while, as they cleared up their trash and collected their things, exchanging their shoes at the front desk again, Baekhyun glad to be out of the gross slippery bowling shoes. She was aware of the reason behind his long pause, and his purposely vague answer. His friends knew they were dating, obviously, but she wasn’t aware how much other people at his school knew about it. She wouldn’t exactly be the obvious choice for someone like Kris to date, after all, and she wondered, sometimes, if he was a little embarrassed of her, of the way she dressed, of her school, of her family background. She’d never brought it up because she was scared of what he would say.

She put it out of her head as she climbed into the passenger seat of his car, giggling as he held the door open for her with a perfectly serious expression on his face, the lack of even a twitch making her laugh harder. When he climbed into the drivers seat, she reacher to buckle her seatbelt and then paused, looking at him curiously as she realised that he hadn’t started the engine yet. 

“What?” she asked, when she saw him looking curiously back at her.

“What time do you have to be back?”

“Nine,” she said. A quick glance at the clock on the dash showed that it was almost eight. “It’ll take about half an hour to get there from here though.”

“Mmm,” he said. She looked back at him to see his face closer, eyes dropped to focus on her mouth. _Oh_ , she thought, and tilted her head enough to close the suddenly smaller distance between them.

Kissing still wasn’t boring at this point. She wondered if kissing ever got boring, and was fairly certain that if she reached that point she’d rather be dead than live without this in her life. His lips were warm and soft, but insistent, one of his hands coming up to grip her shoulder. As usual she had a few seconds of panic about what her hands were doing, what she was going to do with her mouth, the awkward distance between them bridged only by the gearstick. And then she was lost. 

His free hand slid into her hair, tilting her head back so that the angle was less awkward for him. She arched easily into it, hands pressing to his chest, sliding on her seat to get closer, making a soft noise as she let her mouth drop open before his tongue even asked for it. She felt more than heard the rumble of approvement under her hands. Often she felt like she shouldn’t be so eager about this, that she shouldn’t fall apart quite so easily under his kisses, under his touch, but she just couldn’t help it most of the time. 

“Love this,” he muttered against her mouth. “Love kissing you.”

“Really?” she asked, before she could stop herself. He pulled back, looking surprised. His hair was a mess and she blinked because she couldn’t remember running her hands through it. She blushed at the questioning look in his eyes. “I just — you’ve kissed lots of girls, I think, and I just — I didn’t know if I was any good, you know? So like—”

“You’re good,” he interrupted, a note of finality in his voice. “You’re very good.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her bodily towards him. There was a scramble for balance for a few moments, which righted itself when her knee slid, quite of its own volition, between his thighs. Her other knee stayed on her own seat. 

When he kissed her it was harder than before, as if he was trying to use sheer force to prove just how _good_ she was. It was the kind of kiss that always made her feel weird inside, like her internal organs had been changed into water and everything was just sloshing around inside of her. Everything apart from her heart, though, which was beating so hard that she thought Kris should be able to _hear_ it.

His mouth slid wetly over hers, his hand on her waist trailing up her back. She felt him pause for a moment when his fingers failed to graze against a bra strap and she shifted uncomfortably. That hand left her back to cup her cheek, thumb stroking gently against her cheekbone. She let out a soft whimper into his mouth and then felt _mortified_. 

“Baekhyun,” he groaned, both of his hands gripping her shoulders. “You don’t — don’t even know, do you?”

“Know what?” she asked. Her voice had gone horribly high and breathy; she sounded like she was trying to be sexy and failing miserably. Although, judging by the way he squeezed his eyes shut at the sound of it, maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. 

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing, just — come here—” 

One of his hands very suddenly went to the leg still resting on the passenger side, fingers wrapping around her thigh before he tugged and shifted so that she could rest it on the edge of his own seat. She yelped, jerking away from the touch on her leg, the feeling of soft skin brushing against her inner thigh. The movement brought her body flush against his, chests pressed together, her knees sliding so that for a moment, his thigh pressed firmly between her legs, sending a thrill of pleasure through her that terrified her like nothing had before in her life. 

“Ah,” she whimpered, and then realised what had just happened with a sickening swoop of her stomach, and shoved him away. The motion merely sent her backwards, since he was already leaning back against a solid surface, and she banged her head off the roof of the car. She cried out in pain and his hand immediately cupped the back of her head, checking for damage.

“Are you okay?” he asked, voice gravelly. 

“Yes,” she whispered, squirming to get away from him. Her skin felt hot and too tightly stretched across her bones. She managed to squirm her way off his lap and flop back into the passenger seat, pointedly not looking at him as she, rather redundantly, said, “I want to stop.”

There was a pause. “Okay,” he said. For a moment she felt guilt threaten, but then he touched the side of her head softly, and when she looked at him, his eyes had gone as soft as in the bowling alley. “I’m sorry. I didn’t — mean to do that, and I didn’t mean to frighten you. Are you hurt?”

“No,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I didn’t — I mean —” Her eyes drifted, trying to escape the look on his face, and she spotted the time on the dashboard and shrieked. “Oh my god, it’s _late_.” Time had passed so quickly that it was now just after eight thirty, and their chances of getting back before her curfew hit were getting slimmer with each passing second.

“Baekhyun—”

“Please, oh my god, Kris, just drive.” She scrambled for her belt, fumbling with the strap until he reached over and steadied her hands. “I said drive!” 

He gave her a look which suggested that he thought she’d completely lost her mind, but obediently started the engine. He wouldn’t understand, she knew. He always got her home by curfew because he understood only that she wanted to be home by curfew. He’d never had anything like that hanging over his own head, a deadline to meet before her parents started chipping away at what social life she had already. And if she was late from a date with Kris, then maybe they’d not let her see him anymore—

She cut that thought off quickly.

She didn’t speak for the journey home, angry with herself and embarrassed over what had happened. She was aware of Kris opening his mouth once or twice, but she didn’t find out what he was wanting to say because he never actually said it. When they hit their third red light, she was such a ball of nervous energy that when he lay a hand on her knee and squeezed comfortingly, she jumped with a squeak. 

They pulled up outside her house five minutes late. She was all set to jump out of the car the second he stopped, but he reached out and took her wrist. “Baekhyun,” he said softly.

“What?” she asked, too jumpy to keep her voice down like he had managed, her eyes darting between his face to the house she could see through his window. 

He leaned in and kissed her mouth gently, just enough to catch her attention fully. He smiled when he pulled back. “I’ve got a basketball game next Friday night. Do you want to come?”

She blinked. “Yes!” she said, and then, “You’re not embarrassed about me?”

Now it was his turn to blink. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, you just never asked me before.” She feigned a casual shrug. “I thought, maybe, you didn’t want me going. Because I’m — well, I’m not like the people you go to school with.”

He growled, but not really at her. “Believe me, I’m way more embarrassed of them. You’re perfect, Baekhyun, I’m not scared of that. I — I don’t know if you’re prepared for the people I go to school with. Some of them are far less pleasant than even my friends, and I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.” His fingers were clenched tight around the steering wheel. “I just wasn’t sure if you wanted to.”

“Of course I want to!” His face softened back into that smile, and she kissed him before she could talk herself out of it. “Text me?”

He nodded his head once, and she let herself out of the car, ran around it, sprinted up to her house and burst into the door, heart hammering in her chest. Now she was _ten_ minutes late, and her parents were going to be so mad, they were going to—

They were sitting on the couch together watching a movie, the remnants of Chinese take-out lying in boxes on the coffee table. They glanced up when she appeared, but didn’t appear upset in any way, shape or form.

“I’m late,” she said, instead of any greeting. 

Her dad raised an eyebrow. “So you are.” 

“Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want to ground me or take my phone off me or—”

“It’s ten minutes, Baekhyun,” said her mom, laughing slightly. “It’s fine. Did you have fun?” 

“Yeah!” Baekhyun said, and settled between them on the couch, picking at the leftover food while she told them about Kris’s unexpected talent at bowling, warm and secure between them. The other details, like what had happened in the car, and the lingering feel of Kris’s fingers against her inner thigh — those could wait until she saw her friends on Monday.


End file.
